The Crown of Helios

At a cafe in the Barri Gótic, Edgar sat against one of the last remnants of the original Roman wall, tucked in a back room dimly lit and filled with the vaporous sweetness of chocolate and coffee. He stooped over his little black notebook, focusing on one word, one lost utterance that he could almost see among the cosmic junk of his mind. He had been at this same table since the sun rose, had been at this same table each day for months, always staying until siesta.

The sound of a snap yanked him from his daydream; he had broken one of the tines on the nib of his pen. Ink poured onto the paper.

“No, no, no . . . “ he repeated as he fumbled for his handkerchief and blotted the ink, watching stanzas disappear amidst a viscous cloud of black.

“Please,” he called to no one in particular, but rather in the general direction of the nook where he knew the wait staff absconded between orders. “Please, if you have, uh, ser-vee-yeta.” His English-Spanish dictionary filled his coat pocket without a single crease on its pages. He thought of it now and cursed himself for his neglect, but his mind had been concerned with the completion of one certain poem, that was in point of fact nearly done, save for one word that just a moment ago was so close at hand.

“Please-” he called again, dropping his handkerchief, and when bending over to retrieve it being thrown forward from his seat by a sudden force.

“Are you quite alright?” a woman’s voice called out in an British accent, “Is this your stop?”

The woman grabbed his arm as he rose to his feet. My stop?, he thought to himself as he realized he was on a coach passing by Piccadilly Circus. He knew the junction well, he had been there many times as a student. Before he could become disoriented by the sudden shift, the reality of his situation—the sounds of midday London, the smell of petrol in the air, the bodies rushing past him to exit the side door—oppressively confirmed itself.

“Is this your stop?” she repeated, and he realized she was still holding his arm. He felt for his notebook—the dictionary, it’s there, but where is my . . . —he looked at his feet and saw his notebook splayed open. He snatched it, checking for the many cards and folded slips of paper that he kept tucked in the various pockets and pages: a veritable pocket-sized filing cabinet.

“Um, yes, yes it is my stop, thank you,” he said, not knowing what else to say. She smiled at him, leading him towards the door.

“That was quite a fall you had there. There was no one on when I boarded at the beginning of the line, and I take note of who’s coming and who’s going, but by here it gets so crowded I lose track. I don’t think I saw you sitting back there. You know, I didn’t even seen you get on. It’s like you came out of nowhere.”

He remembered the word, or the absence of the word, and flipped the pages to find his unfinished work, where only a moment ago he-

“There’s no time for that now. Come, step down,” she said.

“I’m sorry, I think you have me confused with someone else,” he told her.

“I’m Clytie,” she said, but when she saw no look of recognition on his face, she added, “Oh, of course, the word. Heliotrope,” with a nod, “There. You people are always so stuck on the formalities of passwords.”

Heliotrope. It rang in his ear, images of purple flowers, water nymphs, it was the word he was searching for. He clenched his hand around his notebook, determined not to drop it should another trans-hallucination displace him once again.

“You people?” he heard himself ask. He stepped down behind her, onto the platform. People continued to rush past, no one paying them any attention.

“Yes, you people, moles, spies, whatever you American agents call yourselves these days. Anyhow, here is the valise, be back at this spot tomorrow at noon once you’ve met your contact. Everything you need to know is in the envelope.”

“I think you have the wrong-” he stopped, noticing that she was looking past him, over his shoulder, with a look of fear.

“Take it, quickly,” she said, shoving a leather valise into his stomach, nearly winding him. He dropped his notebook again, and immediately bent down, fearing a passerby would step on it, but Clytie grabbed it before he could, opened to a blank page, and scrawled something before handing it back to him. He put it in his coat pocket, but when he rose, she was gone. He turned in the direction she had been looking, trying to determine what had scared her, when he noticed a man with thick eyebrows and a dark suit carrying a box of flowers and coming directly towards him. He glanced around, maybe he is not coming towards me, maybe he is going somewhere near me, he thought. He looked back at the man, now staring directly back at him and increasing his pace. Does he have something inside that case? Isn’t that too cliche, the old gun in the flower box bit?, he asked himself as he noticed the flowers in the box were purple. Heliotropes, he said to himself and he began to run. He had no idea where, just away, running down a long serpentine street, before turning this corner and that one, away from the man with the flowers, away from the junction, anywhere he could collect his thoughts. He kept squeezing the notebook in his chest pocket, nearly folding it in two, just to reassure himself that he had the only connection to reality he could, at this moment, hold onto.

In a doorway down a small side street, Edgar caught his breath. He had only remembered now that Clytie had written something in his notebook. He flipped to the page and found first, a smudge mark, and then: Bush Lane, near London Bridge. In her haste, she had rubbed the wet ink with her hand. That is a 9? 4, maybe? He opened the leather valise and immediately shut it again, sticking his head out of the doorway, looking both ways up and down the street. He dipped back in and slowly opened it again; it was full of small bills bound together with a manila envelope atop the pile. Inside was a note that simply read: $20k, use same code word. Edgar’s heart was pounding in his brain louder than it had been when he thought he was being chased. He looked at the address again. He did not recognize the street name, but he knew enough about London to know that if he could make his way towards Trafalgar Square he would be heading towards the water, and that Waterloo Bridge was very near there. London Bridge would be just a few bridges past that, then he could figure out his way to Bush Lane from there. This is madness, he thought to himself, but the chilly London air shook him beyond any sense of reason. No, somehow this is real.

He hadn’t noticed the weight of the valise when he first set out walking, but after several minutes he had to keep switching which hand was carrying the bag, for a while lifting it like a baby, then just letting it dangle. He kept looking behind him for the man with the eyebrows and the dark suit. After an hour of walking he recognized the staircase that led up to the London Bridge, but when he ascended, there was no one on the street. Not a car, not a person, neither on his path nor in a window. He looked at the address in his notebook again, and noticed a small tab of paper that had dried into the ink where Clytie had written. He scratched at it at first, then when it didn’t loosen, he pulled at it, tearing a piece of the page. Oh, no, he thought, The address is already smudged, I can’t tear the street name. But it was too late, the tab had turned to a strip that was now standing straight up and mocking him. He gave it one last pull and it ripped off the page, revealing writing underneath. Had he read her writing incorrectly? The address number was now clear, definitely a 4, and the street name, somehow, had changed. Or had he read that incorrectly as well? It did not read Bush Lane, but Banys Nous. He walked towards the bridge, and for the first time noticed his feet were hurting in the derbies he had bought just days before. He remembered the salesman saying the shoes would be stiff for 24 hours, and Edgar thought this meant for one day, but after his trek from Picadilly Circus to the London Bridge, he realized the man meant 24 hours of walking. Still no one on the street, he thought to himself, and then felt a pang of anxiety when he remembered the thick eyebrows.

“I would welcome those eyebrows at this point. I could at least explain this strange situation to someone,” he caught himself saying out loud. For a moment he felt embarrassed, then laughed when he realized it didn’t matter because there was no one around to hear him. $20,000 . . . That could buy a lot of time, he thought as he imagined renting a small flat, all to himself, somewhere in the old part of Barcelona, near his cafe, something old and full of antique furniture and charm, and inspiration. No more flatmates, no more shared bathrooms, no more noise at all hours. This money will buy time and inspiration. Heliotrope, he remembered, and he felt in his pocket for the notebook, rushing to find the page with the unfinished poem, to see how the word fit into it. The page had begun to mulch from the ink that spilled from his broken nib, and he couldn’t remember the line that lead up to this perfect word. He held the page close to his face, trying to decipher through the ink cloud, the indentation his pen had made just before the tine had snapped. His fingers searched the surface of the grain, he closed his eyes, trying to remember, trying to place himself back in the moment, at the cafe table, What was that line?

“Servilleta, señor?”

Edgar opened his eyes. His fingers were covered in ink.

“Servilleta?” the voice called again. He looked up to see a waitress holding a stack of napkins out to him, hanging from two fingers so as to not get ink on herself when he took them. The sounds of dishes and chatter had crept in so stealthily that he hadn’t noticed. Was it . . . a dream? He blotted the ink, and then whispered to himself, Heliotrope. He rushed to write the word down before he forgot it, but then remembered the broken pen.

“No, no, no,” he cried and ran towards the front of the cafe, grabbing a paper menu to wipe his fingers, and making a pen sign in the air with his inky hand while asking, in English, “Do you have a pen? Pencil? Anything, please?” The waitress shrugged her shoulders, and he realized it was no use. He would have to find a pen quickly.

As he ran out the door, he looked at the crumpled menu in his hands. The address on the menu read: Carrer del Banys Nous, 4. The waitress yelled, “Señor! Su maletín!”, making the gesture of a handle in the air, and pointing to the back of the cafe. He turned to look at the table he had just vacated. Clytie’s valise sat on an empty chair. The sun shone in his face.